Footnotes

We are grateful to A.Kouria for her assistance in confirming the authenticity of this lot.

Delightfully reflected on shallow still waters two unassuming seaside adobe structures are transformed into images of subjective truth suspended between real time and memory. The motif of the house reflected on water is a favourite and recurrent theme throughout Economou's oeuvre, echoing distant memories marked by early experiences and visual recollections of the Aegean Sea and his native port town of Piraeus. During his twenty-year stay in Paris (1906-1926), the painter travelled extensively throughout Bretagne, Normandy and the south of France, especially the area around Martigues,1 depicting weathered houses and old mills captured in a wide range of subtle tonalities and articulated with a sense of sculptural stability and permanence. Many of these paintings were included in the artist's first one-man show in Athens (1926) and, as noted by art historian A. Kouria, "they rank among the finest examples not only of the artist's first period but of his entire oeuvre."2

1. Martigues, the 'Venice of Provence' as it is often called, is a town close to Marseilles that attracted such towering figures of modern art as Derain, Dufy and Braque.
2. A. Kouria, Michalis Economou [in Greek], Adam publ., Athens 2001, pp. 27-28.